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Proxima: the rationale behind our new brand

On Monday 30 January 2012, buyingTeam announced that it was transitioning to a new brand name and identity - Proxima. I have received an influx of commentary around the new name and I thought I would take some time to explain the rationale behind the Proxima brand name.

Why Proxima?

During the last two years we have repositioned our business as an end-to-end procurement services business, with a clear vision and a strategy to achieve our ambitious goals. Having done this, the next logical step was to refresh our brand, which included challenging the appropriateness of the buyingTeam name.

This has not been an easy decision, nor one which has been taken lightly. At the start of the process, we were very keen to refresh the brand, but were not persuaded of the case to change the name, due to the brand equity that the buyingTeam name has.

What brought it to a head was when we conducted a survey of external stakeholders, including some existing clients, which identified that the name was not representative of the organisation we are, our future ambitions, and indeed may at times be hindering the market's perception of us.

What does the new name mean?

In Latin, Proxima literally means 'closest or nearest'.

We wanted our new name to represent what we are about as a business, and how we work with our clients. In forming the name, there were four areas we wanted to be represented:

Proximity: More than strong personal relationships; a deep understanding of the factors that drive decision-making in our clients' businesses

Proxy: Working on organisations' behalf to deliver results that exceed all expectations

Please keep the comments coming in or contact me here if you would like to find out more about Proxima.

Post a comment

Jason Mlicki

Guy, Thanks for sharing some of the insight behind the brand. Also, thanks for clarifying that the decision to rename was based on a survey of EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS. A lot of rebranding initiatives are started based solely on internal perceptions and are somewhat destined to failure.